Word Finder - authority

definition

The power to enforce rules or give orders.

example

I have the authority to penalise the staff in my department, but not the authority to sack them.

definition

(used in singular or plural form) Persons in command; specifically, government.

definition

A person accepted as a source of reliable information on a subject.

example

the world's foremost authority on orangutans

definition

Government-owned agency which runs a revenue-generating activity.

Now he was exerting his authority in another way.

I didn't mean to sound like some kind of authority on the subject.

Still, what business could survive without a person with final authority on decisions?

Even then he had begun to distrust the authority of tradition and his teachers.

People that dictate the rules make decisions for others with much authority.

He's unaccustomed to having his authority challenged.

It is important to respect and submit to the authority to which you are assigned to.

Anyone in authority seemed habitually out of the office after Dean gave his name.

It had to be difficult to maintain any semblance of authority with a toddler clinging to his face, but he managed to do it.

Her father had been the final authority, but never had she questioned her mother's authority.

Had Giddon overstepped his authority?

News and information that undermine their credibility or authority aren't so welcome either.

He had neither authority nor right to ignore her emphatic command that he leave her place and remain silent about what he'd seen.

Even then there is no appeal to authority; nothing is accepted from without.

It is a most valuable authority for the events of his own times.

They appear to have recognized the paramount authority of a family descended from a chief named Monaheng.

His military authority was confined to Italy; and his power of life and death over the citizens was at an early period limited by law.

As a lecturer, he was inferior in charm and eloquence to Brown and Stewart; the latter says that "silent and respectful attention" was accorded to the "simplicity and perspicuity of his style" and "the gravity and authority of his character."

Modern economic criticism and analysis has destroyed the authority of the " old Political Economy " as a scientific system.

In particular, the Roman "North Road" which ran from York through Corbridge and over Cheviot to Newstead near Melrose, and thence to the Wall of Pius, and which has largely been in use ever since Roman times, is now not unfrequently called Watling Street, though there is no old authority for it and throughout the middle ages the section of the road between the Tyne and the Forth was called Dere Street.

Except for this Æthelflaed's authority remained unimpaired.

Originally it seems to have denoted the coast district between the Oder and the Vistula, a territory which was at first more or less dependent on Poland, but which, towards the end of the 12th century, was ruled by two native princes, who took the title of duke about 1170 and admitted the authority of the German king in 1181.

Hence the term is applied to states in which the supreme authority is vested in a single person, the monarch, who in his own right is the permanent head of the state.

On the great subject of peace and war he supported the king's authority, and with some success.

The appeal to Rome was a natural course to be advocated by Wolsey, whose despotism over the English church depended upon an authority derived from Rome; but it was probably a mistake.

All these faults make him a peculiarly unsatisfactory authority where we cannot check his statements by those of other authors.

There is general truth in what was once said by a high authority to the effect that, while there will be something dignified in the humblest Rajput, there will be something mean in the highest Mahratta.

He second wife was Joanna Bridges, said on very doubtful authority to have been a natural daughter of Charles I.

The Order was at once supreme ecclesiastical and political authority.

In September 1888 he was elected a member of the first chamber of the Riksdag, where he attached himself to the conservative protectionist party, over which, from the first, he exercised great authority.

The mayor is elected for two years and has the powers and authority in criminal cases of a justice of the peace.

In 899, when Arnulf died, Hatto became regent of Germany, and guardian of the young king, Louis the Child, whose authority he compelled Zwentibold, king of Lorraine, an illegitimate son of Arnulf, to recognize.

When trouble arose between Conrad and Henry, duke of Saxony, afterwards King Henry the Fowler, the attitude of Conrad was ascribed by the Saxons to the influence of Hatto, who wished to prevent Henry from securing authority in Thuringia, where the see of Mainz had extensive possessions.

The duty of collecting and weighing evidence for himself was at every turn impressed upon the boy; he was taught to accept no opinion on authority.

Is it possible then to obtain unanimity as to the methods of arriving at conclusions in social and political matters, so as to secure similar agreement of opinion among the specially skilled, and similar general respect for their authority ?

It is obvious from what he says that his inner life became very different after he threw off his father's authority.

Whilst Antigonus was occupied in the west, Seleucus during nine years (311-302) brought under his authority the whole eastern part of Alexander's empire as far as the Jaxartes and Indus.

Further, as the country became more consolidated and the central government extended its authority over economic affairs, new regulations came into force, new organs of government appeared, which were sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony, with the existing system, and it becomes for a time far more difficult to obtain a clear view of the actual working of economic institutions.

The appeal to authority cannot be permitted in economics any more than in chemistry, physics or astronomy.

He was not cast in a heroic mould, and he had no desire to figure at the stake; like Cecil, and Elizabeth herself, he had a great respect for authority, and when his time came he could consistently impose authority on others.

Disputes about vestments had expanded into a controversy over the whole field of Church government and authority, and Parker died on the 17th of May, 1575, lamenting that Puritan ideas of "governance" would "in conclusion undo the queen and all others that depended upon her."

By his personal conduct he had set an ideal example for Anglican priests, and it was not his fault that national authority failed to crush the individualistic tendencies of the Protestant Reformation.

Edward hoped still to conciliate the nobles and gain Scotland by a policy of clemency to all who did not dispute his authority.

She also provoked a dangerous enemy in John Knox by her expressed contempt for a letter which he had written to her, but the first revolt against her authority arose from an attempt to establish a standing army.

The monophysite monks appealed to his authority, but could not prevent Justinian and the fifth oecumenical council at Constantinople (553) from anathematizing his teaching.

Thus, when the men of Reggio and Modena overthrew the rule of their duke, he at once accorded protection to them, as also to the inhabitants of the cities of Bologna and Ferrara when they broke away from papal authority.

The chief direct result in the life of the Egyptian people was the virtual destruction of the governing caste of the Mamelukes, the Turks finding it easy to rid themselves of their surviving chiefs and to re-establish the authority of the Sultan.

The promulgation of the Concordat (18th of April 1802) and the institution of what was in all but name a state religion tended strongly in the same direction, the authority of the priests being generally used in support of the man to whom Chateaubriand applied the epithet "restorer of the altars."

Napoleon's powers as First Consul for Life were so wide as to render much extension both superfluous and impossible; but we may note here that the senate now gained a further accession of authority at the expense of the two legislative bodies; and practically legislation rested with the emperor, who sent his decrees to the senate to be registered as senatus consulta.

Those of Bourrienne and Fouche are of doubtful authority; the latter are certainly not genuine.